Tips and Tricks to Build Muscle Naturally…

Is your goal to build muscle naturally?  Let me guess. You’ve been hitting the weights day in and day out for weeks, even months, yet you are showing very little muscle improvement. Right? I hear ya. Today, there is a massive amount of fitness data literally plaguing the Internet and fitness magazines. It’s downright exhausting to even try and filter through all the information coming at you in 20 different directions. What’s even worse, the current information on bodybuilding is so grossly lacking scientific evidence. It has come to the point that literally anyone who can get a free website or a Fanpage thinks he or she is a fitness expert.

So, what I’m going to do is tell you 10 ways to build muscle naturally. You may be surprised that there is a bit more to building muscle naturally than what the newest trainer on the block just copy/pasted from another website or an article written by a teeny bopper who has been training for a solid 8 months and is now an “expert.”  What I’m about to tell you is nothing new or even original. This is just overlooked and forgotten basic elements of how to build muscle.

There is a lot of confusion about how to really build muscle naturally. Many people are under the impression that all they have to do is get a gym membership and workout to build muscle. There is a little more to it than that. *wink* It is true that you can have some muscle gains simply by aimlessly slinging iron around in the gym, but your overall muscle development is severely limited. By implementing just a few select factors, you can build muscle naturally and fairly quickly.

Bodybuilding Law #1 – Find Your Personal Starting Point

Many times, lifters training to build muscle usually fail miserably, due to the most basic factor; they fail to find their personal starting point. Your unique starting point will differ from someone else’s starting point. Your unique starting point is based on your unique body type, current training format, eating protocol, activity level, and body stats.

It’s simple… If you don’t know your body stats, how will you determine your training and eating starting point? You can’t. Before you hit the gym you need to do your homework and find your unique starting point. Once you do, build a diet and training system based on that so you can build muscle.

Bodybuilding Law #2 – Implement Progressive Overload

This is another biggie, failure to challenge oneself. I see this all the time; lifters (mostly women) are not challenging themselves with weight training. If you want to build muscle naturally, you HAVE to stimulate your muscles and this means to continually challenge them EVERY time you enter the gym.

Simply hitting the gym three times a week and doing the same exact exercises for the same number of reps and sets only burns calories. While this can be good, you aren’t going to transform your physique very well.

The objective when you are training is to build muscle naturally and you do this simply by implementing progressive overload. Your muscles will only grow if you overload them progressively.

This can be easily done by increased poundage used as well as varying exercises, reps, and sets.

Bodybuilding Law #3 – Use Proper Form When Training

Just because you are lifting weights does not particularly mean you are going to build muscle. Doing two sets of proper biceps curls will produce much greater results than two sets of curls with bad form.  Cristian at build-muscle-101.com notes, “Squats and deadlifts can be very dangerous if you perform them in the incorrect form.  That will hurt you and keep you away from the gym for a long time.”   There is a training technique to every exercise, and simply knowing how to properly execute each exercise, you will boost your muscle development in record time.

Bodybuilding Law #4 – Concrete Your Goals

While this sounds so simple that it’s silly, you’d be shocked at how many lifters and even competitors have trouble with this one when they want to build muscle.

Often times, women believe they want to build muscle. However, when the muscle weight shows on the scale with as few added pounds, they FREAK OUT and think they are getting fat. Out of “weight-gain fear” they changed their goal to fat loss. A few weeks or months down the road they decide they want to build muscle again and go back to muscle-building mode. They keep this back-and-forth method going and end up staying neutral because they never give their body time to do one or the other.

Goal confusion will not produce muscle gain or fat loss results. Goals are only good when followed for a set amount of time.  You see, your trusty scale cannot distinguish between water, fat, muscle, bone, and organ weight. The scale weighs your body as a whole. In order to determine your muscle development progress you need to be taking your body fat composition.

Stop focusing on numbers. The fine details of intricate weight fluctuations are irrelevant when you want to build muscle naturally.

Bodybuilding Law #5– Information Overload

Often times rookies and even many intermediate level lifters have a hard time with information overload. Information overload is having so much information at hand and the reader cannot process any of it or feels so overwhelmed and can’t absorb any of it.

Bodybuilders get into information overload mode by reading every conceivable piece of information they can find on the Net and in fitness magazines. The end result is, they don’t really understand the basic to know how to efficiently sift through the information to locate the key elements.

A simple way to overcome this dilemma is to find one person to list to and listen to him or her only or use one set of ideas and use them only.

Gather your data on the fitness concept and get a complete understanding of it. Once you are able to understand the information you will be able to implement other ideas or concepts.

You will get information that actually works by reading books on kinesiology and editorials by scientists and doctors in the field holistic healing and sports nutrition. As much as you would like, you just wont’ get the true information in hyped-up muscle mags.

Bodybuilding Law #6– Track Your Progress to Build Muscle

If you are not tracking your muscle development, how will do you know you are making progress? You won’t.

To build muscle naturally you need to track your training days, your exercises, the poundage you used, the sets you did, and reps cranked out. By using this data each week, you can build on it with progressive overload and build muscle naturally.

This is the easiest step, so you NEED to it!

Bodybuilding Law #7– Do Not Neglect Your Weak Muscle Groups

Fess up. Everyone is guilty of this at one time or another. Really… I mean what kind of ego is behind working a weak body part that you aren’t very strong with?  It’s common for bodybuilders to train their strong body muscle groups; for one it’s ego boosting workout and it’s more fun.  However, the true bodybuilders train their weaknesses body parts harder. Improving your weakness makes it a strength and creates balance.

To give you an example, my legs went from bird legs to killer quads in just months.  True story.  I had puny legs my first few years of bodybuilding. Being such an under developed and weak muscle group make it hard for me to even want to train them.

I did a few female bodybuilding competitions and per the judge’s feedback, I built a head-turning set of powerful legs in just eight months. I used these laws and created a killer leg training program that got results!

Bodybuilding Law #8– Implement True Intensity

A lot of lifters, bodybuilders, and even competitors, are confused about what training intensity actually is. This can be problematic if your goal is to build muscle naturally and transform your physique.

An authentic certified trainer will be able to tell you the difference in anaerobic and aerobic intensity. Anaerobic intensity is placed on poundage used and aerobic intensity is placed on time factor.

So, is doing more exercises, sets, and reps higher intensity? Sure, if you want to build your cardiovascular system and muscle endurance. However, if you want to build muscle naturally, stick with 2-3 exercises (including one compound exercise), and 3 sets, in the 6-8 rep range.

For intensity purposes, if you cannot pump out 6 reps then the weight you are using is too heavy and if you can crank out more than 8 reps the weight you are using is too light. Find YOUR intensity level and progress on that to build muscle naturally.

Bodybuilding Law #9– Don’t Trust The Latest “Breakthrough Supplement”

The supplement industry is over a $20 billion dollar market. Every year we are hit with thousands of new muscle-building and fat-loss supplements. Not only that, “improved” supplements are pouring out the woodwork. Supplement companies are marketing companies and they prey on your personal hot buttons. They will use persuasive advertising and promotional hype to pull you in to buy their latest product.

Most supplements are really useless. If you do your homework and read the science of sports nutrition, and human physiology you’ll understand why some supplements are useful and the rest are just plain garbage.

Along with the quality supplements comes proper timing. While quality supplements are effective when you want to build muscle, they work better when timed properly with nutrition, training, and/or cardio.

Bodybuilding Law #10– When You Just Can’t Do It, Get a Coach

When you get overwhelmed and need a hand, look for personal guidance to get you on track and moving forward. Some of the best professional bodybuilders and figure competitors have coaches to help them on their journey to success. Simply by having a qualified trainer to take the guess work out can prevent wasted time and eliminate costly errors.

Also, paying attention to how your trainer is structuring your program over the course of several months is a lot of information. Pay particularly close attention to the outline format.